Lingering at Zoar

Scripture

Introduction

Back in the ’50s, a little boy walked into a drugstore and asked the druggist if he could use the phone. The druggist obliged, and the boy dialed the grocery store down the street.

“Do you have any openings for a stock clerk?”

“No,” the manager said. “We already have one.”

“Is he doing a good job? Could someone better replace him?”

“No, we’re very satisfied with him.”

“Thank you,” the boy said, and hung up.

The druggist had been listening the whole time. “I’m sorry you didn’t get the job, son.”

“You don’t understand,” the boy said. “I already have the job. I was just calling to check up on myself.”

Christians, I think we need to do some checking up on ourselves. We’re almost two months into the new year, and what a change it has been. Change is happening fast this year. As I’ve been reading through my Bible again, the Lord has drawn my attention to a few verses in Genesis 19. In this article, we’re going to look at a man named Lot who had a LOT of change in a short period, and we’re going to see the warning God gives us in how he responded to that change.

The Setup

In Genesis 18, Abraham has a conversation with God and two angels at his tent door.

Abraham prepares a feast for them, and they begin to talk about Sarah having a son. Sarah is eavesdropping and laughs to herself, saying she’s too old for that. She gets scared when the Lord calls her out on it, and she denies it.

Then the passage switches.

The four of them start walking toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and they begin discussing the incoming judgment. In verse 22, the two angels break away to head toward Sodom, while Abraham stays on the road, standing and talking with the Lord. They discuss how many righteous people it would take for the Lord to spare Sodom. They start at 50 people in verse 26, and by verse 32, Abraham has whittled it down to 10. If there were 10 righteous people, the Lord would spare the city. On this note, the Lord leaves and Abraham returns to his tent.

Scholars estimate the Hebron/Mamre area where Abraham camped was anywhere from 35-55 miles from Sodom. Let’s look at Genesis 19:1:

The angels miraculously get there that evening after eating lunch with Abraham. They meet Lot at the gate of Sodom. Why is it important that Lot was at the gate? Because the gate was where the men of prominence sat to discuss important matters. It was town hall, the market, and the courthouse all rolled into one. Lot is a man of reputation in that wicked city, with at least some public influence.

The Bible says Lot was a righteous man who was vexed daily by the wickedness he saw around him. I’ve talked with the Lord about that one before, because it didn’t make sense to me. But I guess it’s no different than being the one God-fearing politician in a room of wicked people, or being the one Christian in your workplace. Maybe the city wasn’t as wicked when he first got there but over time it changed. We’ll never know.

Lot quickly begs the two angels to lodge with him that night instead of in the street. No doubt these angelic beings are beautiful, and Lot fears what will happen when night falls and the perverted men of the city come out.

Night falls, and the wicked men of the city surround Lot’s house, wanting to rape the two angels. Lot offers his daughters up, fearing the men. In that culture, you protected your guests at all cost, and even though it wasn’t right, Lot probably felt like that was the only option he had. We can look at this and understand that there are terrible consequences that come with bad company. Eventually, you’ll put yourself in corners where most of the decisions you can make are bad decisions.

Of course, because of these men’s sexual preferences, they’re not interested in the daughters. The Bible says they begin to press sore upon Lot, storming the house. The angels quickly pull Lot inside, shut the door, and smite the men outside with blindness.

They ask Lot if he has anyone else in the city who needs to come out with him. Lot goes around asking his sons-in-law and family members to come because God was going to destroy the city, but they all thought it was funny. None of them listened. Verse 15 says the morning arose, which means the whole night is gone and it’s time to go.

But Lot didn’t go on his own.

The word lingered means to hesitate, tarry, or question. Evidently, Lot wasn’t going to go on his own so the angels had to intervene.

They put their hands on him, his wife, and their two daughters and pulled them out of that wicked city.

In my mind, I’ve always imagined a dark storm overhead, lightning streaking through low purple thunderclouds, with the two angels screaming at Lot and his family to leave. But I’m beginning to wonder if it wasn’t just a clear sunny day, no different from any other morning. No way for me to prove it, but I figure I wouldn’t be lingering if I could tell something was about to go down.

So the fact that Lot was lingering could have meant a few things. Either he didn’t know how close destruction was, he was still pleading for his family to leave with him, he didn’t want to leave his wealth, or he was paralyzed with fear. Regardless of the reasoning, judgment is about to fall and Lot is waiting around.

Remember the conversation Abraham had with God a chapter earlier? In it, Abraham acknowledges that God is the judge of the earth, and He will always do right.

We see in Genesis 19 that God did right on both accounts. He saved the righteous and judged the wicked. As we discussed earlier, the Bible says Lot was righteous, and Sodom was wicked.

When God says in His Word “He will always do right” in Genesis 18:25, “always” still applies today. God still saves the righteous and judges the wicked today. So the question for us is simple. Which camp are we in?

Are you lingering?

You might think everything is okay in your life today. But it’s not.

My Bible tells me that the process of sanctification (becoming more like Jesus) doesn’t end on this side of heaven.

God keeps chiseling away at you and me the entire time we’re here on this earth, until we get our new bodies and leave behind these sin-cursed ones that age and get sick. He continues to mold us until we get our new minds that don’t lust, wish evil, and are puffed up with pride. Indeed, Lord will continue to work on us. That means both you and I have things in our lives right now that God is working on. This means both you and I today have the opportunity to step forward with God or to linger behind.

God continues to judge. One day we will face ours. Are you lingering? Perhaps it is pet sins? Maybe it is fear of following God’s plan for you? Are you pushing God off because you believe you have more time?

If you know you’re lingering, know today that God is calling you out of it.

He may not send an angel down to physically grab you by the hand and yank you out of whatever situation you’re in, but He still has ways of getting to people when they decide to drag their feet and stay in sin. When He gives you the command to go and you feel that conviction in your heart, it’s time to get up and go from it. Don’t sit there and argue with Him.

Unfortunately, this is what Lot did.

After Lot’s lingering, he’s pulled from the city, and as the angels are pulling him out, they tell him to escape and look not behind him. Don’t stay in the plain where Sodom and Gomorrah were. Escape to the mountain. And what does Lot say to them? What does Lot say to the messengers of the Lord?

“No, I’m not going to do that.”

Lot decides to argue with the Lord. What was the Lord’s command again? Look at verse 17: Leave Sodom. Don’t look behind you. Don’t stay in the plain (this was where Zoar was). Escape to the mountain.

And the Lord was merciful to Lot. Verse 16 puts it plain as day.

Lot was arguing with a merciful God, a God who only wanted what was best for him and who knew in His omnipotent wisdom what the best path was. Still he decided to argue. Friend, are we doing the same thing today?

This dialogue reminds me of a child with a parent. There were many times as a kid where I argued with my parents, but I didn’t know all the variables at play. In fact, when I was young, there was a kid who lived across the street from us, and I remember one afternoon when he asked if I could come over and play. I remember my mother politely telling him no. I was so mad. I argued with them about it. Why couldn’t I go play? What was the big deal?

I had no idea that the kid’s father had some issues that later came to light. He would not have been someone I needed to be around as a child. But I didn’t understand this. I didn’t have all the information. My parents did.

The argument approach that Lot took was quite interesting. Let’s read on to verse 19.

So the Lord has just saved him from fire and brimstone in Sodom but the Lord can’t protect him in the mountain? Exactly. It is as foolish as it sounds.

Lot was saying he could not go to the mountain because some evil (that he could not articulate) was going to take him and he was going to die. It hasn’t even been five minutes and he has already forgotten the provision of the Lord in pulling him out of Sodom and Gomorrah.

He ties it up in flowery language. He talks of “finding grace in His sight” and “thou hast magnified thy mercy,” but the real talk happens right there at the end. He tells the angels he can’t do it.

Application for Us

How many times does the Lord tell you something and you say, “I can’t do that, God”? Look back in your life. Has God failed you yet? If He pulled you out of your version of Sodom, you ought to be giving Him praise and looking to Him for direction, not complaining about whatever He has for you next.

We get too comfortable telling God what we can and can’t do, what we will and won’t do, and we do this without knowing all the variables that are at play. Remember, God knows everything. You and I only see a limited, tiny portion. And you can wrap it up in all the flowery language you want. You can sing all the songs, pray elaborate prayers, talk to people about “following God’s Will” and “living by faith” and how much you love Jesus. Make it sound like you still want to serve the Lord. But if your feet aren’t moving, it’s all for naught.

I know a thing or two about doing what I want when I want, even when it’s not the best thing. I know a thing or two about saying what I can and can’t do.

My father had a project he bought all the parts for eight years ago. It required a bunch of electrical wiring between a thermocoupler thermometer, a tiny computer, a solid state relay, a melting pot, and an extension cord. I decided a week or two ago to pull out all the parts and complete the project. I AI’d and Internet-ed my way into figuring out how to wire it up. I was stripping wires, crimping stuff, doing surgical taps and tightening up terminals. Then when I went to flip the switch to put 120V through it, my wife almost had a fit. To be fair, there was plenty of exposed copper wire, but I told her it was just for testing and I’d go back and do it right once I knew it worked.

I told her I couldn’t wait to do it the right way to see if it’d work. I had to try it out my janky way first. I didn’t want to take the time to unwire it because I had something I wanted to try and I wasn’t too worried about a lethal 120V that awaited me if I touched the wrong wire. Of course, hindsight being 20/20, she was right. When I told her I couldn’t wait to try it safely, what I really meant was I wouldn’t wait to try it safely. I had something that I wanted to do that was different from what the right thing was. I wanted to do it my way.

Since the dawn of creation, humans have been telling God they couldn’t do things, when the reality is they just didn’t want to. Moses said “I can’t speak” in Exodus 4:10. Jonah said “I can’t go to Nineveh” in Jonah 1:1-3. Peter said “I can’t eat that unclean meat” in Acts 10:9-16.

But we see time and time again where God shows us that we can do things. The crux is putting our preferences and wants aside and commit to doing God’s work. The key is doing it through His power instead of our own. We see the results in Scripture. God gave Moses Aaron. God opened the ears of the Ninevite people. God told Peter not to call unclean what He called clean.

When you do what God wants you to do, you’re going to end up in uncharted territory. God likes to move us into new, uncomfortable areas sometimes because it forces us to rely on Him more. The Bible is full of examples. Moses led a nation. Jonah watched as the people he hated were converted to his brothers and sisters, serving the same God. Peter ate meat with the Gentiles.

This tells me that if we were to stop lingering and start moving, we might encounter some uncomfortable situations. But when I’m uncomfortable with where God has placed me, I need to ask for strength, not argue.

First, if you’re lingering today, the Lord is calling you to move.

Second, let’s say you’ve made it a step further than that. You finally stopped lingering and made the move, but now you’re in unfamiliar territory and you’re scared of what God has next. It’s not the time to argue. It’s the time to continue trusting and obeying, trusting His power and obeying His authority, living each day through His power and not your own. When I’m in uncharted waters, that’s not the time for me to play the role of boat captain. Nor is it the time to argue with the man who IS the boat captain.

The next question we must ask ourselves is “if I’m not lingering, am I arguing?” If the Lord has you under conviction to change something, to do something, to speak, to serve, or to listen, it’s not the time to argue.

Lot lingered. Lot argued. What became of him? So much could have been avoided had Lot just listened to God the first time.

We see in verse 19 that Lot was too afraid to follow God’s command, and so he lingered and argued.

So off he goes to a place God never planned for him to be. Look at verse 23.

Now hop down to verse 30.

He was afraid in verse 19, so he does something God didn’t want him to do. He’s afraid again in verse 30, so where does he go? To the mountains. The place God wanted him to go originally. But something wasn’t the same when Lot decided to go on his own instead of following God.

We should never tell God we’ll start following Him “eventually”. If He’s drawing you now, if He’s imploring you now, if He’s laid something on your heart to do now, you better do it now.

Because if you wait to do it later, the circumstances might have changed. There’s a reason God wants you to do it now rather than later.

God told Lot to go to the mountain now, but Lot went to Zoar instead for a brief period of time. Look at verse 23 to 30. That was all the time Lot spent in Zoar. But what happened in between? Don’t miss this.

Notice the chain of events. In verse 23 Lot enters Zoar (with two daughters and his wife). In verse 24 and 25 God begins to judge Sodom and Gomorrah. In verse 26, Lot’s wife longs after Sodom and becomes a pillar of salt.

In my head, I always imagined all four of them running pell-mell across the plain while God rained fire from the sky behind them, and Lot’s wife turns around physically and is turned into salt. But reading the text, that doesn’t seem to be the case. As soon as they enter Zoar in verse 23, then the Lord begins raining fire on Sodom in verse 24 and 25. Then Lot’s wife looked back.

In verse 26, the word “looked” (in the original language) means “to scan, i.e. look intently at; by implication, to regard with pleasure, favor or care.” Scholars estimate Zoar was 10-16 miles from Sodom and Gomorrah. If an atomic bomb was going off 10 miles away from you, you’d probably physically look that way too. A lot of people in town probably did. It’s the natural human reaction. I don’t think they all turned to salt. But for Lot’s wife, I believe it was more than just a physical look. I believe Lot’s wife was still longing after the wicked life she had in Sodom.

Would she have had the time and ability to long after Sodom had she been in the mountain with Lot and their two daughters? We’ll never know. Would Lot’s two daughters still have been inclined to lay with their father incestuously had their mother still been in the picture, sleeping with her husband, living with them in the mountains? We’ll never know.

What about the two kids that came from Lot’s two daughters? Moab and Benammi, the father of the Moabites and the Ammonites. Look at God’s command to Israel in Deuteronomy 23:3-6, many years later.

The Ammonites and Moabites were effectively cursed. Now, don’t misunderstand. Because God loves us each individually, each of these people were offered redemption from Him. Remember Ruth the Moabitess? Seeing how God worked in Ruth’s life, we can rest assured that all of the Moabites and Ammonites were given opportunity individually to be redeemed. But we see that their collective cultural identity was eventually destroyed as God judged them for their wickedness.

What wickedness? The Moabites enticed the children of Israel with false god worship and sexual immorality.

The Ammonite god, Molech, was a source of child sacrifice and idolatry among the Israelites. Their gods corrupted Israel.

Could all of this have been avoided had Lot not lingered and argued? It’s possible if Lot had skipped Zoar and went immediately to the mountain, like God had said, we wouldn’t see the drama that unfolded over hundreds of years after.

It was a drama that reached all the way to Solomon building altars for false Moabite gods!

As my father once told me, any time God gives a direction, it creates an opportunity for us to do right or do wrong. One bad decision leads to a bad output, which leads to another bad decision, which leads to another bad outcome. So the cycle goes until you stop lingering and arguing and put yourself under the authority of the Lord. We all need to do it now, because we have no idea what God sees coming down the pipeline for our lives.

Remember, all of this stemmed from where Lot wanted to live. Lot’s seemingly unimportant decision to go to Zoar had repercussions for hundreds of years. All he argued with the Lord about was simply where he was going to live. However, God saw the bigger picture. He laid out that full picture for us in history, recorded in His Word, so we could heed to the warning.

Yet some of us will finish reading this, ignore the warning, and continue with the same mistakes ourselves. I plead with you. Don’t do that. What blessings of God are you spitting on? What curses and trials may we be bringing on ourselves and our children and our grandchildren?

If you’re like Lot’s wife, looking at the sin of this world or the sin of your past and thinking about it longingly, stop.

If you’re like Lot, dragging your feet and arguing with God when He’s told you what to do, stop. The risk is too great, and the opportunity to serve and honor God with our lives is only so long.

I work with a good Christian brother at my secular job. My first time walking by his office door, I saw a spreadsheet posted on his wall. Each cell was a tiny square. He had filled in about a third of them, and in the bottom quarter, across a few cells, the word “retire” was written. Of course, my curiosity was piqued and I asked him about it. I learned each square represented one day of his life. He was numbering his days.

Filling in that square, day after day, kept him focused on the real question: “What am I doing to follow Jesus better today?” He isn’t lingering and he isn’t arguing. This is the attitude that I pray we would all emulate.